This week a group of leading technology vendors and users have formed the IP for Smart Objects (IPSO) Alliance, whose goal is promoting the Internet Protocol (IP) as the networking technology best suited for connecting sensor- and actuator-equipped or "smart" objects and delivering information gathered by those objects.
Smart objects are objects in the physical world that - typically with the he...
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A team of researchers led by Spanish scientists has published their discovery of the complex molecule naphthalene in an interstellar star-forming cloud, indicating many prebiotic organic molecules necessary for life as we know it could have been present when our own solar system formed. According to the new research — published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters — the naphthalene molecules we...
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Don't get the idea that we've found every kind of astronomical object there is in the universe. This is exactly why humans send astronauts to risk their life to service space telescopes: in a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal, scientists detail the discovery of a new unidentified object in the middle of nowhere. Astronomers working on the Supernova Cosmology Project report finding a new ...
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A tiny, eight-legged critter that can suspend all biological activity in extreme environments survived a journey to space that would have instantly killed any human and most other life forms.
In the first test of its kind, researchers exposed the hardy segmented creatures, called "water bears," to the open and harsh vacuum of space, with all its deadly radiation, on a spacecraft in low-Earth orb...
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Personalized genomics just got a lot more accessible. Until tonight, the cheapest genome scan was available for just under a thousand dollars. Thanks to improvements in microarray technology, 23andMe has been able to cut that cost by more than half -- to $399 -- well within the reach of cash-strapped grad students, frugal genealogy buffs and other not-so-early adopters.
“By taking advantage of...
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INTEL DEVELOPER FORUM, San Francisco, Aug. 21, 2008 – Intel Corporation's chief technology officer took a fascinating look at how technology will bring man and machine much closer together by 2050.
Justin Rattner, during his keynote today at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, predicted big changes are ahead in social interactions, robotics and improvements in computer's ability to...
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Following the announcement last week that scientists have put exercise in a pill, this is a round up of the latest advances and developments in the human enhancement sector, some are already here, some are in the early stages of development, what all these point to however, is the fact that Human V 2.0 is well on the way as Anders from Transcurve.net reports.

The largest particle accelerator in the world, which will feel its first full proton beams on Wednesday, September 10, just oozes numerical hyperbole. See the big numbers behind the mother of all atom smashers.

The digital revolution now engulfing our world emerged from the events during and immediately after the Second World War, when intellectual titans such as Alan Turing, John von Neumann, Norbert Wiener, and Claude Shannon roamed the Earth. Many of the predictions they made for the future in those early days are now reality, or something close to it. Turing foresaw computers as artificial intelligenc...
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In this clip from The Simpsons, Homer explains to Marge why he does not want to take an adult education class: "Every time I watch something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain." Watching the clip, or any other, engages multiple brain regions that act in parallel to generate a coherent conscious experience. For example, the visual cortical in the occipital lobes process the stream of info...
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Efforts to develop a massive environmentally friendly power plant combining photovoltaic generators and windmills that will float on the sea are primmed to spark a revolution in clean power, according to a team of scientists at Kyushu University.

Last week the Internet and European news outlets were flooded with poignant photographs of Gana, an 11-year-old gorilla at the Münster Zoo in Germany, holding up the body of her dead baby, Claudio, and pursing her lips toward his lifeless fingers. Claudio died at the age of 3 months of an apparent heart defect, and for days Gana refused to surrender his corpse to zookeepers, a saga that provoked a...
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Fiery journeys to the center of the Earth occur only in the sci-fi realm, but now scientists have laid out a way to pinpoint our planet’s center of mass, providing a more accurate map of that core destination.
The results will lead to critical information for studying earthquakes, volcanoes, global sea-level rise and warming, and a post-glacial rise in some surface areas related to the melting...
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Electrons have something in common with people: the more information they acquire about their setting, the more they become aware of their individuality and the more belonging to a group loses its importance. As a result, the coherent harmony that binds the electrons into a fixed relationship with their environment is lost. This is what scientists at the Fritz-Haber Institute of the Max-Planck Soci...
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For the last eight months, the sunspots that usually freckle the Sun have virtually disappeared, and nobody knows when they'll return, or how plentiful they'll be. The speed at which the next breakout of spots occurs should reveal how active – and potentially damaging to Earth's satellites and power grids – the new solar cycle will be.
As this New Scientist article reports the current abse...
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"Humanity is far from perfect in its understanding, abilities, or intentions. We must not imagine, however, that we and our civilization are less than precious. We have the gift of intelligence, and that is the finest thing this planet has ever produced." by Michael A. Seeds